1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a server system for acquiring a document saved in a cloud, a method for controlling a server system, and a storage medium.
2. Description of the Related Art
A form of managing business data and documents and performing various types of processing in a cloud platform is beginning to be prevalent. A representative example of the cloud platform is Salesforce CRM® from salesforce.com, Inc. A user accesses a web page in a cloud platform via the Internet through a browser on a client computer. If a user gives an instruction to print a document through the web page, the browser is redirected to a document generation server, and the user selects a document to be printed, on a screen returned from the document generation server. Then, the document generation server acquires the document in the cloud platform and transmits the document to the document generation server. The user can confirm (preview) the content of the document before actually giving an instruction to print the document. The de facto standard of a document format handled in the cloud is Portable Document Format (PDF). To preview a PDF document, the user needs to give an instruction to display a preview of the PDF document, on a screen returned from the document generation server. The document generation server downloads the PDF document to the browser on the client computer, and a PDF viewer application installed in the client computer displays a preview of the PDF document.
Additionally, documents other than a PDF document can also be saved in the cloud platform. There is a demand for printing such documents. Examples of the documents that can be saved in the cloud platform include Office documents such as a Microsoft® Word document and a PowerPoint® document and image documents such as a Joint Photographic Experts Group (JPEG) document and a Portable Network Graphics (PNG) document.
A conventional cloud platform provides a preview display function for displaying a preview of the content of a saved document on a browser. For example, if a browser has accessed a web page in the cloud platform in which Microsoft® Word documents or PowerPoint® documents are saved, the document is displayed on the browser so that the document can be previewed. At this time, the document automatically converted by the cloud platform into a format that can be previewed on the browser, such as the Flash format or the PNG format, is displayed.
Meanwhile, mobile terminals such as tablets and smartphones represented by iPad®, iPhone®, and Android® have been rapidly prevalent. A user increasingly accesses a cloud platform using a mobile environment and prints a document. To preview an Office document, an Office application needs to have been installed in the client environment. An Office application, however, has not necessarily been installed particularly in a mobile environment. In response, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2003-015837 discusses a conventional method for displaying a document so that the document can be previewed regardless of the client environment. Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2003-015837 discusses a technique for converting a document into a predetermined format (an image file) and then displaying the document on a browser.